The 8th Fighter Wing “Wolf Pack” based at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea put on a rare early morning “elephant walk” sortie generation exercise earlier this week. The idea behind the drill is to push ground crews to their limits by making them prep as many combat-ready jets as possible at short notice. The result is…

The F-16’s agility, cockpit ergonomics and incredible visibility helped make it the fighter to have for decades. As some “Viper” pilots will tell you, you don’t strap into the F-16: it straps onto you. You can see how amazing the view from the cockpit is and just how responsive the jet is in this awesome video via the …

Lockheed’s F-16V testbed flew for the first time yesterday. This face-lift of the F-16 is almost entirely internal, but it gives the most successful 4th generation fighter a quantum leap in capabilities. But don’t expect the F-16V’s game-changing features to show up on USAF F-16s anytime soon, and that is a major…

A U.S. Air Force F-16 was struck by ground fire causing damage to one of its horizonal stabilizers during a mission over Afghanistan last Tuesday, according to reports released today. The stricken jet returned to base to make an emergency landing after dropping its external fuel tanks and its air-to-ground munitions…

More evidence of Russia’s deepening and seemingly erratic involvement in Syria’s civil war has now appeared via movements of parts of its Black Sea Fleet into the Mediterranean and blatant incursions into Turkey’s airspace by their Syrian-based tactical aircraft.

Our good friend and flying photog Frank Crebas was out in the Majove Desert at Edwards Air Force Base this week to take some shots of the F-35’s testing. In the end he ended up with something even more exciting — three consecutive generations of tactical combat jets in formation.

A Block 50 F-16CM from the U.S. Air Force 480th Fighter Squadron, the “Warhawks,” based at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, crashed into a forest at around 9:30 a.m. local time while on a training mission near the U.S. Army Garrison in Grafenwoehr. The pilot safely ejected and is being held at the hospital with only…

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds have been on a roll making the best of their cross-country flights between their home at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas to air shows around the country by making some slight detours over amazing scenery to capture some stunning images. In the last two weeks they swung over Niagara…

We’ve heard of significant shortcomings before with the fighter jet that’s supposed to be America’s future, but this is just as bad as it gets. The F-35 performed so dismally in a dogfight, that the test pilot remarked that the it had pretty much no place fighting other aircraft within visual range.

The 35th Fighter Squadron, based in Kunsan Airbase in South Korea, participated in two Alaskan exercises this year, and they happened to take their GoPro cameras with them. The result of which is some gorgeous and exciting footage.

An Iraqi Air Force F-16D went down near the town of Douglas, along the Arizona-New Mexico border late last night. The jet was reportedly the inaugural F-16 delivered with Iraqi colors and the condition of its pilot, reportedly an Iraqi airman training in the U.S., remains unknown. The crash has sparked a large fire…

Fuel is the ever-present specter that looms over every pilot. It’s great when you have enough of it, and terrifying when you don’t. This is especially true for notoriously fuel hungry tactical fighters. Conformal Fuel Tanks (CFTs) have become an increasingly popular way to add range to existing fighter designs, such…

Dutch F-16AMs and American F-15Cs had at it last April during the Florida and Oregon Air National Guard’s composite deployment to the region as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve. The awesome video below gives us an in-the-cockpit look at what it is like to spar with an Eagles high over the North Sea.

As part of New York’s Fleet Week, Memorial Day, and to promote the Bethpage Air Show this weekend, the USAF Thunderbirds roared high above New York City in their signature six-ship delta formation. A F-16D also whizzed around to capture these awesome photos.

After a Jordanian F-16 pilot was captured and burned alive in a steel cage, Dutch F-16 crews are being armed with Brugger & Thomet MP9 sub-machine guns. The idea being: if a pilot ejects, they can hold off the enemy long enough for a combat search and rescue unit to arrive. More firepower gives them a fighting chance.

A Moroccan F-16 and a Saudi AH-64 Apache both went down while operating over Yemen yesterday. The crew of the Apache has supposedly fallen into Houthi Rebel hands while the F-16’s pilot fate remains less clear, although grisly images of a body said to be located at the crash site are making their rounds on Twitter.